Part of the problem of “Chapter 1” is that in addition to overstuffing it with too many characters, the editing is pretty bad. Viewers will struggle with some violent cuts in which Costner has jumped the action forward months within the same chapter without any clues.

In mixing up the Beanie Baby timeline to play out each storyline simultaneously, The Beanie Bubble needlessly complicates itself. But it also makes a compelling reflection of history repeating itself.

There's no law that says teen-age comedies must be totally dopey. It's a relief to find one like Class Act, which has an abundance of silliness, yet manages to generate belly laughs. That's largely due to the efforts of Kid 'N Play, who demonstrate as much skill at film comedy as they do with rap music. [08 Jun 1992]

Though Liman knows how to mix action and comedy as well as anyone, “The Instigators” is better whenever there’s less going on.

Written and directed by Bruce Robinson, Jennifer Eight (code name for the case) is a gripping though improbable thriller with an ample number of plot twists. [9 Nov 1992]

Golda has seeds of interesting insights, like the suggestion that she was betrayed by some of the men she relied on during the war and yet protected them. Or how false intelligence is nothing new when it comes to Middle Eastern conflicts. Or how female leaders inevitably face catch-22s. But none of these is taken.

Black’s filmmaking is old-school, grounded in ’80s humor, reveling at its over-the-topness and often gleefully thumbing its nose at political correctness. That might be refreshing, but it also can lead to questionable decisions.

At the film’s center is Q but there is a hollowness there. She can rappel down a staircase using a fire hose, endure waterboarding and use a dinner tray as an assault weapon, but there’s little insight in her inner life or emotions and her backstory appears too late.

The film may not be top-drawer Reynolds, but it is superior to most of today's action films. [30 Apr 1987]

Six Minutes to Midnight is entertaining enough if a little underwhelming.

How do you go back and yet forward at the same time? The filmmakers have rather cleverly done that by incorporating plot points from the first two movies and building out with new characters and blurring the divide between flesh and digital worlds.

In his first major film without partner John Belushi, Aykroyd proves a film comedian of first rank. [9 May 1983]

Director William Eubank keeps the action taut and the look of the film is realistically impressive and dark, with grimy, dirty workers donning cool dive suits that make them each look like Transformers. His camera often goes tight on the shocked faces inside the helmets. Stewart, in particular, shines with a combination of steely nerves and harrowing expressions.

The filmmakers haven’t gone so far as to put you in the game, too. A lot of it is watching all the characters find keys and have their own revelations, so by the time you get to the fifth room, it’s understandable if interest is starting to wane a bit even with the addition of a link between the six people.

Tomb Raider is an often fun and visually compelling action pic, that is also sometimes unintentionally silly, with a great actress leading the whole thing.

First-time director Ben Bolt, son of writer Robert Bolt, evokes excitement with the gambling scenes, but the climactic shooting is poorly staged, and the epilogue is a letdown. [21 Oct 1987]

It’s a winking, self-aware horror movie that will make you laugh even when things are drenched in blood.

The movie on the page wants to romanticize the simple pleasures of race car driving outside of the glitz and glamour of the high-rolling industry, and has been directed by someone who doesn’t actually believe that the driving is enough and that it does need all the trimmings of a “Fast and Furious” spinoff to make it exciting to an audience.

An intelligent and riveting courtroom thriller. [16 Feb 1995]

Director Simon Wincer, who made the first Free Willy, knows a thing or two about gigantic mammals that fly through the air, and he does a nice job here. If only his editing team had been more ruthless in trimming from the film's second half. [27 Jul 1995]

The elements never quite cohere in “Freud’s Last Session.” The rhythm of conversation feels choppy and lacks the probing give and take that can electrify a two-hander.

Majors is certainly chilling and captivating, but Kang seems like a mismatched foe for a standalone Ant-Man film and the result is a “Quantumania” that is trying to be too many things.

There is little here, amid the high-tech photorealistic animations, that would satisfy London’s concept of “wild.”

Don’t Worry Darling is ultimately neither worthy of all the off-screen fuss nor quite the on-screen disappointment it’s been made out to be.

The real problem with I Feel Pretty, written and directed by Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein, is not in its message or conception, but in its ragtag execution.

Turn-your-brain-off summer fun, and doesn’t need to be anything more than that.

Haunted Mansion is by no means a terrible movie, or even an unpleasant watch, but it’s just missing the magic that makes the trip to the theaters (or Disney World) worth it.

The tagline for “Lee Cronin’s The Mummy” is “Some things are meant to stay buried.” That also applies to the misguided “Lee Cronin’s The Mummy,” which should definitely stay deep underground for eternity.

The little blue alien who can sprint quicker than the speed of light has ironically benefited from slowing it down, taking a pit stop to retool and emerge this month as a total crowd-pleaser.

The Secrets of Dumbledore, lacking in much magic, is a bit of a bore.

Real Men is a far-out farce about male bonding and role reversals that sinks under the weight of its own absurdity. [16 Jun 1988]

This is pure lazy storytelling, like thinking that just showing us a clip of Bob Ross painting is somehow uproariously funny.

Did you want closure in a satisfyingly coherent way? That’s not what you’ll get. Did you want to see Curtis in one more (we think) badass performance as durable Laurie Strode, whom she’s been playing for some 45 years? You’ll get that. Did you want to see more gore and guts, with a disturbingly creative scene involving a record turntable? You’ll get that, too.

Walt Disney Animation’s Wish is stunning to look at with textured and rich watercolor-inspired animation and easter egg treasures for audiences nostalgic for the classics. But it is also more concept than story: A strained and forgettable attempt to pay homage to the studio’s 100 years.

The first thing director Roland Emmerich should do after his latest movie Midway hits theaters is apologize. Apologize to the visual effects crew, the stuntmen, the carpenters, the costumers and artists. He has squandered their considerable visual skill in retelling the crucial World War II battle at Midway by melding some of the best action sequences in years with the most banal of words.

Ham-fisted and simplistically drawn. [11 July 1995]

There is no thrill, entertainment or insight to be gleaned in watching the myriad ways people can die by their own hand. It’s just awful, and this is not a film that is interested in grappling with the trauma in any interesting or helpful way. Instead it is two hours of unpleasant drudgery.

Irresistible has its smart laughs and real pleasures.

Though it starts off promisingly enough with Carrey’s character marooned on a “piece of shitake” mushroom planet, it soon becomes evident that this outing is a soulless attempt to up the stakes and cash in.

A new directing and writing team fails to shock or scare with a color-by-numbers plot and a meandering, languid wannabe frightfest.

It’s a empty chamber for movie spectacle and nothing else, where the only option is to pile elements on top of each other until you have, you know, a giant evil ape swinging a vertebrae like a lasso while riding a kaiju controlled by a crystal.

The Alto Knights, despite its pedigree, doesn’t rise anywhere near the heights of its glorious predecessors. It is, rather, an enjoyable if choppily paced look at a relationship between two men, where unfortunately we’re arriving pretty late in the game.

It’s not going to be as iconic as Roeg’s, but it should provide some nice family entertainment at home for Halloween. And, bonus, post-viewing nightmares and trauma should be minimal this time.

Chris Columbus, who wrote and directed as he did for Home Alone, enhances the comedic bits with commentary on the human condition: the emergence of male-female love; the silver cord between mother and son; the plight of aging single men whose only ties are their pub companions.

The sequel, again directed by David F. Sandberg, feels less breezily funny, less fresh, less fleet of foot.

The bad news is that Pink Cadillac treads on old ground and never really takes off. [24 May 1989]

It’s a pretty grim portrait, but even worse it is often repetitive and boring. There are probably enough powerful segments for half a dozen or so outstanding rock videos but not a full-length feature. [13 Sept 1982]

A bit of a charmer, an Ugly Duckling story with a sly wit that keeps it from sliding off into vulgarity. [19 Apr 1993]

It's a film that's two hours of maudlin, heavy-handed overwrought silliness. Think of "Prince of Tides" meets "Benny & Joon," with less entertainment value. [5 Oct 1993]

Nostalgia is not a perfect film but it is moving and sensitive. You leave with your head in the clouds and a new view of your precious stuff.

Perfect is gorgeous to look at, with its disciplined bodies (there is even a visit to a male strip joint) and modern cityscapes. Travolta was never more personable; doubts concerning his star presence are dispelled here. Jamie Lee Curtis matches him charismatically, despite her ambivalent role. [21 May 1985]

Oyelowo is the one who comes off without a scratch and actually has some quite amusing moments (he has a great, high-pitched scream and solid comedic timing). If only the movie was a better showcase.

None of this is likely to be enough for anyone to exclaim “Oh, yeah!” while hopping up and down and doffing their cap. But it is an hour and a half’s worth of superlative marketing that will whet your appetite for more Mario back home on the couch.

The plot is incoherent and jumpy and the dialogue weak. Scriptwriter Tedi Sarafian makes the same mistake his brother Doran made in his movie "Gunmen." It's all effects and nonstop action, as if that can cover for one-dimensional characters. [30 March 1995]

A work of fierce interiority has been turned into a hollow exercise in exteriority.

The tension escalates quite effectively, but the payoff feels weak, because the thing — or person, or whatever — that we’re supposed to be most scared of is hardly as scary as the buildup.

Arteta (The Good Girl, Cedar Rapids) has an underrated ability at crafting comic, humanistic movies out of commercial concepts. But Yes Day slides too often into contrived, loudly scored montages of “fun” that don’t transfer to those of us watching. And while Garner and Ramirez are both very fine actors, neither of them is funny.

As Ethan Coen finds his groove as a solo director, “Honey Don’t” might not be “The Big Lebowski” or “Raising Arizona,” but it is a swing in the right direction. At this rate, if we get the pleasure of seeing a third film, it might just be a classic.

If you accept the low-bar aspirations of “Frozen Empire,” you may get a pleasant-enough experience out of it. It’s a movie that feels almost more like a high production-value TV pilot for an appealing sitcom, with Rudd as the stepfather, than it does a big-screen event on par with the original.

Like its characters, it’s drunk on what came before, relying too heavily on noir tropes. But its smart, thought-provoking concept isn’t so easy to shake off.

What distinguishes The Nun is its silky, sumptuous shadows. Directed by British filmmaker Corin Hardy (“The Hallows”) and shot by Maxime Alexander (who was also cinematographer on the “Conjuring” spinoff “Annabelle: Creation,” The Nun shrouds itself so much in darkness that it at times verges on becoming a nightmarish abstraction. You almost lose sense of what exactly is going on, as Sister Irene falls into a labyrinthine abyss.

Donaldson ("No Way Out," "Marie") directs from a script by Daniel Pyne ("Pacific Heights," "Doc Hollywood"). He spins wheels at times and goes nowhere fast, but manages to produce a fairly even little adventure. There are good performances from the leads, with Rourke his usual nasty self - he's even sprayed his hair into a goofy-looking '50s 'do. Dafoe is determined and no-nonsense; Jackson is a proper, though somewhat manic, villain; and Mastrantonio provides a softened edge to the rough stuff. [20 Apr 1992]

All the charm and style in the world, and J.Lo has more than anyone, can’t make up for the bizarre tonal imbalance of “Shotgun Wedding,” a movie too violent to be funny and too funny (in the odd, weird sense) to be fun.

Hopkins has combined a tightly written script, two superior actors and stunning African vistas into a film that is breathtaking in its beauty and thrilling with suspense. [10 Oct 1996]

Al Capone’s last year could make for an interesting film, but there is little poetry or transcendence in Capone, and nothing even remotely close to the quietly devastating third act of “The Irishman.”

The Meg is best when it acknowledges its derivativeness, just one more silly shark movie in an ocean full of them.

The film has much to recommend it: great scenery, thrilling climbs, expert acting, Zinnemann's meticulous direction. But an oppressive melancholy overhangs the proceedings like an alpine mist, and the conclusion brings a feeling of hopelessness. [22 Nov 1982]

It’s not surprising that “Folie à Deux” originated in concept as a stage show. It’s stuck in place, with only Phoenix’s dazzling contortions to marvel at.

Sissy Spacek and Mel Gibson suffer admirably as the farm couple, but their roles have no real dimension. [15 Jan 1985]

Few films in memory have squandered so much acting talent in such a cliche-ridden, exploitative and dishonest way.

The action comes fast and furious, and the banter is pleasant enough. Diaz, especially, makes the proceedings decently enjoyable and some of the sillier lines believable.

The issue is simply that with all the artistic resources and refreshing ideas here, there’s a fuzziness to the storytelling itself.

Honest Thief, co-written and directed by Mark Williams, is a predictable and slack affair, relying on eerie music, dark sets and smoke to create tension. There is no particular set of skills here.

It’s hard to overstate just how garish and frenetic this whole endeavor is. Even with the explosion of colors it still strains to hold interest.

Yes, the cinematography is what stands out here. There are also several compelling performances, though Baldwin’s somewhat halting, somber turn is not among them.

Wandering aimlessly in the well-worn corridors of 1980s puerile frat flicks, Life of the Party wobbles to a predictable end and then sort of finishes without a bang.

It's admittedly a gimmicky premise for a film about growing up, but screenwriters Kimi Peck and Dalene Young and director Robert F. Maxwell carry it off with lots of humor, reasonable sensitivity and only minimal mawkishness. [1 Apr 1980]

McKay, director of The Lego Movie, is most at home in humor, and The Tomorrow War can be funny. It’s less adept at some of the operatic notes it tries to strike, but, well, aliens can be tricky.

Writer-director Florian Zeller’s second installment in his trilogy examining mental health is an emotional wrecking ball almost exquisite in its destructive power.

The buddy movie balance of “Uncharted” never clicks. Wahlberg, who was once attached to play Holland’s part, plays Sully like Nathan’s roguish, less tech-savvy elder. But they lack the needed chemistry and the script, by Rafe Lee Judkins, Matt Holloway and Art Marcum, doesn’t give them enough comic material to do much with.

Paramount’s limp, animated remake actually triggers new stereotypes in the service of trying to expose racism for a pre-teen audience. The studio seems to have reached for legitimacy by bringing the venerated Brooks along for the bumpy ride, darkening both legacies. What emerged sits uneasily at the corner of tribute, parody, theft and laziness.

Fire and Ice combines fairy tale with sword-and-sorcery for a visually impressive, often exciting feat of animation. [05 Sep 1983]

The Jared Hess-directed action-adventure artfully straddles the line between delighting preteen gamers and keeping their parents awake.

For all its obviousness and insipid dialogue, Sniper does have many moments of armchair-clutching suspense as the two Americans dance and dodge their way around those speeding rebel bullets. And now and then there are flashes about the dark memories that sniper must endure. It's just that those moments and insights are unfortunately too few. [27 Jan 1993]

Wonder Park has a great premise about a spunky kid engineer and a world she constructs taking flight, but takes a few too many dark loop-de-loops and crashes hard. If you pass this amusement park, skip it.

It’s not the quality of the acting that limits Eastwood’s film. It’s a threadbare script that fails to find much of a story to tell behind the headlines.

Morano is absolutely adept in keeping tension rising, her characters grounded and her audience intrigued, a half-step behind.

It is more like half a movie, standing in the shadow of its parent. It is a film made to sell us more lunchboxes.

It might still be passable for cable, but this series has sadly fallen into unwatchable territory.

The most interesting part of The Mother, a decent if forgettable action pic starring Jennifer Lopez, is the one that is left largely unexplored. The movie is a high-concept thriller that boils down to just a few words: She’s a mother and an assassin.

A hopelessly bland and bizarrely self-serious monster movie.

Writer-directors Aron Gaudet and Gita Pullapilly offer up a commentary on the value of work. There’s a critique of capitalism, and an intriguing buddy relationship between two women with very different lives but shared goals.

If the “Insidious” franchise is your jam, by all means go and see the original Fab Four of the Lambert family battle hollow-eyed demons for perhaps the last time. But for everyone else, why not let the past stay in the past?

Overly long, bombastic and poorly focused.

The sequel follows four unconnected stories in different locales, with resultant confusion. Especially since writer-director B.W.L. Norton has employed the outmoded multi-image screen. Still, the movie has moments -- car races, campus riots and especially in the war-zone sequences. [30 Jul 1979]

There’s just not enough there — action, comedy, romance, art — to demand (or, rather, earn) your full attention.

This is a movie that should have probably leaned far less on wild hijinks with diminishing returns and more into the smaller moments of what it means to be friends for 40 years. But it’s not without its charms, either.

The best thing that Holidate has going for it is that Roberts and Bracey do have great chemistry, but they just don’t have a story or a script that can do it justice.